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  "title": "The Purple Pterodactyls",
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    "name": "L. Sprague deCamp",
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      "slug": "but-what-argument",
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      "text": "But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of “premonition” we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.",
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      "text": "I fear me that the eighteenth century, which I have idealized all these years, never really existed. The real one was far dirtier, more narrow-minded, brutal, orthodox, and superstitious than I could have ever conceived without seeing it.",
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      "text": "I passed that off as women’s intuition, which is wrong more often than not. People remember the times it works and forget those it fails.",
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      "text": "His voice had a hypnotic quality, which lulled one into a kind of passive daze. One ended with the impression that one had had a wonderful revelation but without remembering much of what the Master had actually said. Some of his assertions seem to contradict what others had told me of his doctrines; but I understood that he brought out a new doctrine every month or two, keeping his suckers too confused to think.",
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      "text": "The world is full of people who, if they got to Heaven, would complain about the tune of the harps and the dampness of the clouds.",
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      "slug": "as-you-know",
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      "text": "As you know, Monsieur Newbury, the civilization is but a thin crust over our savage interiors, no matter if our skins be white or black. We must try to keep this shell of egg intact.",
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      "text": "It was hardly fair to his opponents, but I have never had much sympathy for the victims of gambling sharks. If they were not trying to get something for nothing, they would not expose themselves to being taken.",
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      "text": "I once read that the Devil studied Basque for seven years and only learned two words.",
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